


no caste in blood

by iodhadh



Series: out of the dust; into the dark [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: A Paragon of Her Kind, Caste, Classism, Fix Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 03:05:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4247043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iodhadh/pseuds/iodhadh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You would think that the best person to choose the new King of Orzammar would be a noble—a seasoned politician with long years of experience in the Assembly. You would be wrong.</p><p>Dust Town has been silenced for far too long, and Drust Brosca is sick of being told he could never understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no caste in blood

**Author's Note:**

> So I may have had some very strong ideas about how the crowning of Orzammar’s new king should have gone.
> 
> Some of the dialogue is sampled directly from the game—at least until Drust starts going off script. The title is from _The Light of Asia_ by Sir Edwin Arnold; the line runs in its entirety, "Pity and need / Make all flesh kin. There is no caste in blood / Which runneth of one hue, nor caste in tears, / Which trickle salt with all."
> 
> This is set during the timeline of [if you dare, come a little closer](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5558480) and serves to flesh out a scene that was only hinted at therein, but it stands fine on its own.

Drust could hear the shouting from outside the door to the Chamber of the Assembly—a cacophony of voices, overlapping and interrupting each other in yet another round of interminable bickering. The familiar frustration that had plagued him ever since he’d come back to Orzammar began to seethe through his blood again. _Ancestors save us,_ he thought. Left to themselves, they’d have argued their way back to the Stone before they ever came to a decision—the Blight would certainly have seen to that.

He was just glad it was nearly over.

Caridin’s crown was heavy in his hands. He paused in the doorway, looking down into the vast bowl of the Assembly hall— _Orzammar’s finest,_ he thought with a wry twist of his mouth—and Oghren glanced over at him. He caught Drust’s expression and did a double take. “You all right?” he said.

Drust schooled his face into its best impression of polite impassivity. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Lords of the Assembly, I call for order!” Steward Bandelor cried as the Warden and his companion made their way into the hall. “This argument gets us nowhere!”

“Then why these delaying tactics?” Bhelen snapped. He had caught sight of Drust approaching and evidently decided to capitalize on his unexpected return. “I call for a vote right now. My father has one living child to succeed him on the Aeducan throne. Who would deny him that?”

Drust’s expression of practiced civility didn’t waver as Oghren spoke briefly to the guard, but his eyes hardened and settled on the would-be king. For Rica, he reminded himself. He was doing this for Rica and his new nephew in their golden chambers, and for everyone who hadn’t been able to make it that far. He didn’t have to like him.

Harrowmont heaved a sigh. “Your father made me swear on his deathbed that you would not succeed him,” he said.

The fresh round of argument that nearly started was derailed by the guard, who stepped into the middle of the hall with Drust and Oghren following close behind. “I apologize for the interruption, Lord Steward,” he said, “but the Grey Warden has returned.”

A murmuring swept around the chamber as the Deshyrs caught sight of them. Drust knew they made a striking picture—they had come directly from the Deep Roads, leaving Shale and Wynne to wait outside, and were coated in dust and splattered with flecks of dried blood and who knew what else; in his hands he carried a gleaming golden crown, freshly forged, of a make that had not been seen for hundreds of years. He caught a ripple of scandalized voices and surreptitious pointing when the nobles seated on his right side spotted his cheek. He held his head high, looking straight forward at the Steward.

He would not hide his brand. Let them take it in and shift uncomfortably in their seats as they tried to avoid thinking about the grime-covered duster standing in a place of honour on their polished marble floors.

Bandelor raised his hands for silence. “Well, Warden? What news do you bring?”

Drust’s voice was sure and steady, and he did nothing to disguise its natural roughness. “I bring a crown forged by the Paragon Caridin on the Anvil of the Void.”

For a moment the Deshyrs were stunned into silence, but then a babble of voices broke out.

“Impossible! Caridin lived hundreds of years ago!”

“I thought the Anvil of the Void was just a legend!”

“What about Paragon Branka?”

“Yes, what happened to Paragon Branka?” Bandelor said. “Were you not seeking her out?”

Drust inhaled slowly. “Branka went in search of the Anvil of the Void,” he said. His voice was sombre. “And she found it. But what she had to do to get there…” He shook his head, revulsion welling up in his throat. He mastered it. “You would not wish to hear it, and I have even less desire to speak of what I saw. Suffice to say that I mourn the loss of the good people who followed her on her selfish quest.” His next words dropped like stones into the echoing halls. “Branka is dead. And all that remains now of Caridin is the crown I hold in my hands.”

“Caridin was trapped in the body of a golem,” Oghren announced loudly over the gasps of the crowd. “This Warden granted him the mercy he sought, releasing him and destroying the Anvil of the Void. Before he died, Caridin forged a crown for Orzammar’s next king, chosen by the ancestors themselves!”

Well, that was a bit of a stretch, Drust thought—but it certainly sounded impressive.

“I would like to believe Oghren’s word,” Harrowmont said, sounding surprisingly sincere for the look of disapproval he was levelling at Drust’s brand, “but it’s well-known the Grey Warden is Bhelen’s hireling!”

Drust bristled, hands tightening on Caridin’s crown, but he said nothing. _I’ll show you hireling,_ he thought viciously. _See what you have to say about hirelings when the Grey Wardens are all that stands between you and a horde of genlock, born from the broodmother your own Paragon created._

“Silence!” the Steward called, once again cutting off the outburst of noise from the crowd. He squinted carefully at the crown in Drust’s hands, and Drust obligingly stepped forward and held it up so he could see. Bandelor nodded, satisfied. “This crown is of Paragon make and bears House Ortan’s ancient seal,” he announced. “Tell us, Warden: whom did Caridin choose?”

For a moment, Drust hesitated. _Say Bhelen,_ he thought—but it wouldn’t come. No matter how much easier it would be that way, he couldn’t dishonour Caridin’s memory by twisting his words for his own purposes.

“He wished me to give it to whomever I chose,” he said instead. Up on the dais, a look of smug relief flashed over Bhelen’s face, then was gone. And suddenly Drust was filled with a poisonous hatred.

Harrowmont’s sword hand twitched, and he sneered. “Why would a Paragon trust someone who knows nothing of us with such a decision? This is preposterous!” He shot Drust a glance that was both dismissive and disgusted, encompassing everything—the brand on his cheek, a vivid blue against the dark brown of his skin; the gore and grit encrusted on his armour; the heavy wear on his equipment, his body, his mind—and in that moment all of Drust’s fury came boiling to a head.

“Nothing?” he growled. “I know nothing?” He squared his shoulders, straightening his spine and bringing to bear all the bulk and power he had added to his frame since his exile to the surface and the Grey Wardens. “Oh, I know something, all right: I am so _fucking sick_ of noble hypocrisy.”

The gasps of the Deshyrs seemed to suck all sound from the room. Even Oghren looked shocked to hear that kind of language from the normally soft-spoken Grey Warden. And Drust looked around the Chamber of the Assembly and felt nothing but contempt.

“Let me ask you something,” he said, his voice resounding in the silence. “How many of you have left the Diamond Quarter—ever, in your lives? How many of you have even looked twice at a servant who crossed your path, let alone a casteless? You say we’re all criminals, and you know what, you’re right—but how can we be anything else when you make it illegal for us to work? Have you ever even _thought_ about how we’re forced to live?” He turned his head, accusing gaze sweeping across the tiered seats. “You sit up here in your grand halls in your jewelled clothes and debate for months on the fate of the entire city, but have you ever, even _once_ , come down from your towers to see what effects your choices have? I promise you,” he snapped, his flinty black eyes focusing sharply on Bhelen, “there is not a single person in this room more qualified to choose the future king than I.”

A muscle in Bhelen’s neck twitched, but he met Drust’s eyes stonily, and after a long moment he dipped his head in a slow nod. Across from him, Harrowmont let out a half-suppressed squawk. “This is an outrage!” he cried, his face reddening. “How dare you address—”

“In case you haven’t figured it out yet,” Drust interrupted, “I’ll spell it out for you: _you can’t touch me anymore_. I got out—and thank the Stone that I did. But not everyone else can be so lucky. Under your rule, they wouldn’t be.”

Harrowmont’s complexion was nearly mottled now, and he gaped at Drust with his mouth working in incoherent anger. Drust dismissed him, turning around to take in the dumbfounded, offended, and—on one face, off to one side and far to the back—amused expressions of the Assembly. His lips arranged themselves into something that may have been a smile, and he nodded to them. “Oh, but what do I know, right?” he said. “Grey Warden or no, I’m still just a duster, and a duster isn’t worth the muck you’d scrape off your boots. Well, here’s what I learned in Dust Town—loyalty. I protect my own, because no one else will. That’s a lesson you nobles don’t seem to have gotten a grasp on yet.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bhelen conceal a tiny flinch. Good. That hit home.

By now the Deshyrs had started to mutter, and some of them tried to speak up—but Drust was relentless. “I’ll tell you something else,” he continued, pitching his voice in the clear tones that would carry over a battlefield. “If this was just about me? I would have walked away and left you to sort out your own mess the second I got here, kingship be damned. When it all comes down to it, nobles are all the same, and I want nothing to do with you.” He turned back around, looking Bhelen squarely in the eye. “But it’s not about me. It hasn’t been about me since I survived the Joining. ‘In war, victory; in peace, vigilance; in death, sacrifice,’” he quoted. “I have a job to do, and I have to think about everyone in Thedas—since apparently none of you are going to bother.”

He hefted Caridin’s crown, catching the attention of the entire room—and then carelessly let it drop from his hands. It landed with the clatter of ringing metal, echoing off the walls. The Steward bit back a gasp of horror; Harrowmont sputtered in rage. Bhelen looked like he was carved from stone.

Drust rolled his shoulders, relaxed, and stepped back, prompting Oghren to stumble over himself as he scrambled to get out of the way. “There’s your crown, Bhelen,” he said. “Your people are counting on you. May you serve them better than you served your family.”

He turned with a jingle of armour and strode from the room, looking neither left nor right at the faces of the Deshyrs as they exploded into argument at his back. Oghren hurried after him, clearly bursting to speak, but he held his tongue until they had rejoined Wynne and Shale on the steps of the Chamber of the Assembly.

“By the hairy tits of my ancestors, boy, what was that?” he guffawed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single noble get scolded that soundly, let alone an entire hall!”

“You’re barely five years older than me, Oghren, who are you calling boy?” Drust said mildly. “ _That_ was a thousand years of casteless anger, finally given voice in a place where it might actually make a difference.” He paused. “And it was also very personally satisfying.”

Wynne raised an elegant eyebrow. “Dare I ask?” she said.

“It’s probably best you don’t,” Drust said with a smile. “We’re done here. Let’s go back to the guest house before I find someone else to yell at. We could all use some rest before we get out of this Stone-cursed city.”

Oghren chortled, clapping Drust on the shoulder. “For a rogue, you’d make a good berserker, Warden.”

“Does that mean it doesn’t want me to crush any heads for it?” Shale put in. It pointed across the plaza. “There are some nice ones just over there—”

Drust laughed. “Don’t you start,” he said. “I’ve caused enough trouble for us all, believe me.” He started across the plaza, and his companions fell in step behind him. Soon they’d be out of Orzammar for good.

Drust had never felt freer.


End file.
